Monday, September 29, 2014

The Strangers - Caterpillar Crawl and Rockin' Rebel

Caterpillar Crawl

Rockin' Rebel

The instrumental group, The Strangers, hailed from sunny San Diego, California and were fronted by guitarist, Joel Scott Hill. In the winter of 1959 the band recorded two edgy numbers for fledgling Titan Records. Hill's guitar work is guttural and sharp edged and not too dissimilar from what Link Wray was recording in a chicken shack out in Washington DC about the same time.

Caterpillar Crawl was given the A-Side nod. A slow, brooding number, Hill's guitar work oozes with a hard edged tone running through a copious amount of reverb. A few years later, Los Angeles group, The Rumblers, would reimagine this song as Boss and release it on Downey Records. (Both Downey and Titan Records were distributed by Dot Records). We wrote about the Flip-Side of that Rumblers 1962 single here.

The Flip-Side of The Strangers single was the even more Link Wray-like original composition, Rockin' Rebel. A fine upbeat number with some rockabilly guitar riffs lifted straight from the Scotty Moore playbook.